Sharpen your senses, re-connect to your intuition and find the clarity and resilience you need when faced with important decisions in your everyday life in a world that is in the middle of a major transition and therefor more complex then before.

Abruzzo: nearby, peaceful, rewilding, regenerative and full of close friends…. See what passes by this tree in one year. If you want to explore, let me know! I have guided a couple of groups through this area. Parco Nazionale d’Abruzzo: One of my favourite places on Earth ;o) See also Wild hart trail 2

Although I sometimes know that I need to change my behaviour, actually doing it proves to be quite difficult. Especially when there is no crisis that triggers and sustains the desired transformation process. I tend to delay until a crisis leaves no other option. And that is a pity as the cost of a crisis is usually extremely high, not only for myself but also for my environment.

How it nice would it be if I could transform myself (or my organisation) without having to go through a such a crisis. It took me a while but I have finally discovered a much more attractive and less costly alternative: creating a safe environment.

A book that makes me feel good! It provides a clear set of practical principles (and concrete examples) of how we can evolve towards a sustainable and regenerative way of feeding ourselves.

It also makes the connection with other area’s of our daily life (oa. organisational structures) where design based on principles observed in our natural ecosystems can show us the way forward. Makes me realise once more that my preference for structured self-organisation (the principles of which are also based on facilitating complex adaptive systems, in case: ‘people working together in an organisation’) is no coincidence. And that there is indeed some coherence behind the seemingly different projects I’m involved with, which I find reassuring:

To set up some basic conditions and guidelines that will allow possibilities to emerge and evolve into a creative and vibrant organism that perfectly matches the unique conditions its specific environment ;o)

Yesterday, half way up a Swiss mountain full of snow, with snow rackets that did not prevent sinking in up to my knees at every step. I had to stop every 5 to 10 steps to recover my breath. Meanwhile feeling a disconnect from the beauty of the environment.

At some point I realised that this was not only due to my somewhat failing physical fitness but also because I was mainly focussing on reaching the top. As I started to shift my attention to each and every step two things happened instantly. Instead of 5 to 10 I could now take 20 to 25 steps before feeling the need to pause. And I started to notice all kind of details of my surroundings such as a variety of animal tracks.

Our behaviour as human race is pretty incoherent at the moment and if sustained will lead to our downfall… Based on his findings in the field of theoretical physics (see video below)David Bohm suggest that we can resolve this lack of coherence by improving the quality of our dialogues.

In this interesting little booklet he explains that if we would not only listen more carefully to each other but would also withhold our judgement for a while (holding space) we will detach ourselves from our (unconscious and limiting) assumptions and create space for the coherence we need to survive to emerge. Whereby a sustained dialogue with a group size between 20 and 40 people would be the most productive setting for this phenomenon to happen.

In the beginning I felt drawn to ‘self organisation’ simply because I am not a very good at managing others at work (nor did I want to..). Over the years I came to realise that self organisation also appealed to me at a much deeper level. It enables people to stay connected to themselves whilst working with others. And as a consequence it makes work more enjoyable and connections to others more authentic, energetic and valuable. As a fringe benefit it also proves to be much more effective way to achieve a common purpose.

Challenge however was to find a form of ‘self organisation’ that does not end in an unproductive chaos. The answer proves to be a mix of a clear purpose, dynamic structure and an inclusive culture supported by a very clear set of principles and rules. In short it boils down to:

1. A power shift from people to ‘purpose’, resulting in a hierarchy of purpose. With alignment with that purpose as benchmark for every decisions.

2. Moving from a static to a dynamic approach to organisation structure. Structure is constantly adapted to whatever is needed at that moment to get closer to the purpose.